The 2006 General Assembly is now in session

Week 8 Update—March 3, 2006

Committees have all but wrapped up their work and legislators primarily will discuss legislation during floor sessions next week. Budget conferees have been appointed to try to reach a compromise on a 2006-2008 state budget.

The House Education Committee will complete its work for the session on Monday morning, while the Senate Education and Health Committee finished its docket on Thursday. Click here for a schedule of weekly meetings (http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?021+oth+MTG

The Budget

The House and Senate have appointed members to serve on the budget conference committee, which will try to reach a compromise 2006-2008 state budget prior to a Tuesday midnight deadline. Conventional wisdom is that the two sides will not be able to reach agreement, given the vast differences in the respective House and Senate plans in funding transportation. Failure to reach agreement would push the legislature into overtime past the scheduled March 11 adjournment. Members of the budget conference committee are as follows: Delegates Callahan, Putney, Hamilton, Cox, Wardrup and Joannou; Senators Chichester, Wampler, Stosch, Colgan and Houck. The group met with Governor Kaine on Thursday afternoon prior to getting budget negotiations underway.

In the education arena, two proposed amendments in particular are getting a lot of attention. The Senate proposes to lower the inflation factor used to calculate Standards of Quality (SOQ) costs, by recognizing less inflation (which had already occurred) than the introduced budget, resulting in a $35.6 million reduction over the biennium. The House proposes to begin phasing out the cap on the amount of federal revenue that can be deducted from the SOQ cost calculation prior to determining state and local funding shares. This would “save” the state about $5.8 million over the two years. Recall that this policy change (to deduct a portion of federal revenues from the calculation) was implemented two years ago, with 29% of such revenues being discounted.

One House budget items faces an uncertain future, as the Senate Finance Committee early in the week carried over for the year HB 3, which would have increased the health insurance credit for retired teachers with at least 15 years of service to $4/month for each year of service with no monthly cap. The House uses part of the money proposed by Governor Kaine for an additional 1% teacher salary increase to pay for the state costs of this enhanced health care credit. The Senate accepted the governor’s proposed amendment to increase teacher pay and did not fund additional health care credit costs.

Legislation

A bizarre series of events on Monday and Tuesday led to the ultimate defeat of SB 544 in the House. Recall that the bill made several changes to the Neighborhood Assistance Act program, including to provide that $1 million of a $4 million cap increase would be dedicated for education programs, and that $3 million was for grants to private schools for students with disabilities. Following a quick Education subcommittee meeting on the measure Monday evening, at which opponents of the bill were not allowed to speak, it was recommended the bill be rereferred to House Finance. Instead of that occurring at the full House Education meeting on Wednesday, it was quickly done during a House recess on Tuesday, was reported from the Finance Committee, then quickly advanced to a final floor vote shortly thereafter. However, a majority of delegates were uncomfortable about the lack of discussion of the bill and referred it House Appropriations, where no action will be taken.

The Senate Education and Health Committee defeated HB 1308, which would have authorized school boards to prohibit school facility use by student clubs or groups that encouraged or promoted sexual activity by unmarried, minor students. The majority of the committee felt that school boards already were empowered to determine policies on use of their facilities. The Committee also defeated HB 164, which would have amended statutes addressing family life education in schools to dictate certain course materials and instruction to emphasize abstinence.

Pending in House Education on Monday is SB 324, which directs the state, in its biennial review of compensation for teachers and other occupations requiring similar education and training, to consider Virginia’s teacher pay as it compares with other Southern Region Education Board states.